As I sit here today pondering the highs and lows of 2016 for me, my loved ones and our country, I am grateful for the presence of this online community in my life. This blog has continued to collect new readers from all over the world and I am grateful for every single one of your nearly 13,000 visits. Over 1,100 of you have agreed to an email notification when I post and 545 of you are part of our Facebook community. I am humbled you keep showing up and joining me here.

I published 57 posts this year and many of you were gracious enough to share your favorites with your friends. Because of your generosity and the way this community continues to gather new friends, I hope to have some extremely exciting news to share with you in the new year about an opportunity to share my writing more widely. Stay tuned!

As has been my tradition, I thought I would take a moment on this final day of 2016 to look back over some of our favorite “conversations” here at Grace Notes.

Top 5 Posts of 2016

1.How to Be a (Mostly) Awesome College Mom Just in time for my older daughter’s graduation from college this past May, I shared a few thoughts on the essential tools I believe all college parents need. Apparently, my somewhat irreverent observations resonated with a few of you, as this was my most widely read and shared post this year. This post was also my first picked up by Huffington Post and shared from that larger platform.

2. Our Journey Back: My Teenage Daughter’s Battle with Anxiety I am not the only writer in our family. My younger daughter, a brilliant and fearless writer (who I hope to be more like when I grow up,) began talking about her battle with anxiety in her writing this year. Because of her commitment to encourage others, she allowed me to tell our story here as well. Our journey back to health resonated with many of you and both Brooke and I have had the privilege of continuing the conversation offline with families who were comforted to discover they were not alone in their struggles. Continue reading →

I had been praying for God’s direction for months. I spent time with my journal and my Bible, I talked about my struggle with trusted friends and I read everything I could get my hands on. Ideas were swirling around in my head, but the details were not yet clear. I wrestled with doubt and yearned for a guarantee of success. Before I took the first step, I wanted to know how everything would turn out.

I knew what to do, but I didn’t want to begin until all my fears were gone.

People of faith have a great excuse to stay stuck in neutral. When we are feeling nervous and unsure, we can always find a good reason to spend a little more time in prayer. After all, scripture repeatedly extols the virtues of waiting on the Lord. Psalm 27:14, among many others, reminds us of the courage sometimes found in waiting:

Wait patiently for the Lord.Be brave and courageous.Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

Yet, if we are really honest, there are times we use prayer as an excuse. More often than we would care to admit, we know exactly what we need to do next but we are hoping the lump in our throat and the butterflies in our stomach will disappear FIRST. We want guaranteed results and happy endings.

But God wants us to obey scared.

One of my favorite stories in scripture is found as the Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land after forty years of wandering in the desert. In order to enter the land of their dreams and destiny, they must first cross the raging waters of the Jordan River. Joshua 3 tells us that “it was harvest season and the Jordan was overflowing its banks.” Joshua and his people know they will need God’s help to get across the swollen river or they will drown in their attempts. Although God has every intention of stopping the river for them to cross, He tells Joshua the water won’t stop flowing until they wade into the river.

Before they saw the miracle, they had to get their feet wet.

Personally, I prefer to keep my feet dry. Raging rivers and deliverance I can’t yet see are not my cup of tea.

But I do love miracles. And, like the Israelites, I have grown weary of wandering in the desert when the Promised Land is just over the horizon.

So I am learning to obey scared. I focus on the next right thing, head in the direction of God’s voice and wade in.

Maybe it begins as soon as you wake up, or perhaps she lets you drink your coffee first. On and off throughout the day, you hear the whispers of doubt. The yammering, nagging voice of inadequacy, the mocking reminder of all you haven’t done, the list-maker of the ways you still don’t measure up.

I don’t know about you, but my inner critic can be a real bitch.

The language of our inner critic is shame. Shame says “No matter what you do, you are never enough.” Shame says “if they really knew me, they wouldn’t love me.” When we experience shame, we feel the need to constantly hustle to prove our worthiness. Although shame is a universal emotion and all of us experience it to some degree, most of us are reluctant to talk about it. According to bestselling author and shame researcher Brené Brown:

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, acceptance and belonging.

As I’ve gotten older and learned more about what kicks my inner critic into high gear, I can sometimes recognize her shenanigans, call her on her crap and shut her down. However, there are seasons when she seems to gain the upper hand for a time and I need to get more focused on listening to the other voices in my life: the voice of God and the voices of the people who love me.

Here are a few concrete ways I turn up the volume on the better voices: Continue reading →

I spent much of this morning following a breaking news story about a local politician embroiled in what will likely be a career ending scandal. Sadly, I would usually be right there with the rest of the public shaking my head in judgment and cynicism, lamenting the lack of morals and good sense so often on display in our public officials.

In this case, I am just heartbroken.

I know this man and I have worked with him. In spite of the demons he appears to be battling, I have always liked him and found him to be an outspoken champion for the poor in our community. Without his advocacy and leadership, the dreams of our recently completed shelter for homeless individuals would not have been realized. While we may not personally be friends, I consider him a good friend of The Lamb Center and I am deeply saddened by his struggles.

If I didn’t know from personal experience the good he had done in other areas of his life, I could easily read this morning’s news story and paint him into a monochromatic corner. The crimes with which he is being charged would make it easy for me to categorize him as a “bad guy” and write him off as just another example of evil, corruption and abuse of power .

But life really isn’t that simple or clear cut, is it?

I made the mistake of reading some of the comments people are posting beneath the online story. As I was reading, I wondered if any of these people would say these things to his face. Yet, even as I “judged” them for the joy they seemed to be taking in his public fall from grace, I recognized myself. While I might not post an ugly comment in an online forum, I too have looked at someone I don’t know personally and silently congratulated myself on my moral superiority.

But hopefully, I am still a work in progress. In honor of my 52nd birthday on Monday, here are five things I am still learning. More specifically, here are five things I would like to learn to live without.

The need for judgment

We are right to be outraged by outrageous behavior and we are right to hold each other accountable for our actions. Yet, too much of my judgment of others is based on incomplete information. Continue reading →

In just 8 short days, my first born will graduate from college. Five minutes ago, this same child was digging in the dirt for worms while sucking her thumb and wearing a sparkly tiara and hot pink plastic high heels. And yes, in case you were wondering, it did indeed require a strong stomach and a relaxed attitude about personal hygiene to watch her play with worms while sucking her thumb. In our defense, I was busy gardening and those worms weren’t going to get married and build precious little worm homes all by themselves!

Now she is a gorgeous, confident 22 year old with big dreams and a dazzling future stretched out in front of her. As with every other aspect of her life, just in time for her graduation, I am finally figuring out how to do this college mom thing. No worries, she has been told repeatedly she is our practice child, so she is quite patient with me.

For those of you soon to join our ranks, here are a few things you will need in your arsenal of tools in order to be a (mostly) awesome college mom.

A Poker Face I really cannot adequately stress the importance of this powerful tool. Luckily, a great deal of your communication will take place over text message which allows your face to freak out while your typing fingers remain calm, cool and collected. In order to keep the lines of communication open, a mostly awesome college mom needs to learn to be non-reactive in the face of news which would have sent you into lecture and consequence mode just a year or two earlier. Things get a bit more lively in college and sometime the stories are…let’s say, “colorful.” Hopefully, your student is an amused bystander for most of the more shocking escapades or at least they are when they share the story with you. If you want them to keep talking, you better learn to smile, nod and occasionally use the big-eyed shocked face emoji on your phone. You particularly need a poker face if your children are theater majors. College theater is extremely weird.

An awareness of 21st century modes of communication As mentioned previously, if you don’t text now, you better start ASAP. Although I occasionally break down and demand to hear the sound of their voices, 90% of my communication with both my college daughters has been through texting. The great thing about texting is the ability to send them a quick note of encouragement Continue reading →

In person, I frequently use humor to connect with other people. It brings me great joy to make people laugh and I have occasionally been known to go a little too far past the line of propriety in my attempts to produce a chuckle or giggle from my listeners. My favorite people are those with whom I can be silly, including my frequently inappropriate extended family. I love to laugh and many find me to be an appreciative audience because I will laugh at almost anything. My dependability as an enthusiastic audience member is probably why they asked me to be Drama Booster President.

Because I tend to write about more serious matters, my blog posts don’t always reflect my love of humor. Over the years, however, I have occasionally found myself at the computer in a “bit of a mood” and the resulting posts are a little more unpredictable. The best ones, of course, are the times I am making fun of my own foolishness.

In honor of April Fool’s Day, my little Friday Five community is celebrating laughter (and perhaps fools) with 5 Laugh Out Loud’s. I decided to share a few old posts where I found myself giggling at my silliness while I was writing.

Here are 5 Times I Made Myself (and possibly you) Laugh:

Speaking of Struggling… Speaking of my own foolishness, this is the pitiful tale of the time I tried to move an air hockey table on a wet floor in flip flops by myself. And how the entire debacle was ALL my husband’s fault. And how I couldn’t be blamed for my bad behavior because I was hungry. Learn from me, gentle reader. Do as I say, not as I do. I still have flashbacks every time I go down in the basement. But my knee is fine now, thank you for asking.